


Beneath the Heart Tree

by emmaliza



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, (sort of), Angst, Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Major Spoilers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Three Eyed Raven!Bran, Unrequited, childhood crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 10:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18689971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/pseuds/emmaliza
Summary: Bran might have loved him once. What a strange thing to think of, now Theon's dead.





	Beneath the Heart Tree

**Author's Note:**

> The series gave my secret rarepair OTP everything and then gave it away. Que sera, sera.

Bran might have loved him once.

That probably is the wrong word. He was just a boy, it couldn't have been more than a childish infatuation. And he certainly would never have thought of it as that at the time. His whole idea of love came from song and stories, dashing knights and fair maidens, and Theon was neither of those things. Bran would never have known he possibly _could_ love him. He hadn't the faintest clue why he always seemed to find himself staring at the older boy, why his japes and taunts stuck with him all day. He didn't even think he _liked_ Theon.

Still, looking back on it years after the fact, he knows there was something there, even if it was no more than a boyish fancy. It could have been love, had he grown into a man at Winterfell, by Theon's side. Maybe.

What a strange thing to think of now Theon's dead.

His body lies not outside the shade of the heart tree, blood dripping from his mouth, mixing with the shards of ice that were once White Walkers, and now just melt into the snow. They will have to move him, at some point. There's no real reason Theon should receive a proper burial, when he knows they will not have the men, time or resources to honour all men who fell, but he will. Sansa would insist. Perhaps they should put him in the Winterfell crypts, or send him back to the sea.

Arya is by his side, cut up from fighting and panting in exertion, shocked by what she's just done. And now he must ask her another favour. “Arya,” he says, “could you help me from my chair?”

She gives him a curious look, but they've all grown used to listening to him these past few weeks, so she obliges. She's so fierce and quick she slayed the Night King, and yet still so small she struggles a little with his weight. But they manage. Bran doesn't make her help him over, he crawls along the ground on his palms. He doesn't feel the ice on his skin.

Theon looks so helpless, lying there like that. That is the definition of death. He is beyond help.

Bran remembers when Theon came to him, that morning in his chambers, when Theon took the castle from them. When he broke Bran's heart. Many others slighted the Starks in many ways, but Theon's the only one who did that to him.

Were he still Bran Stark, he would be grieving. Regardless of what Theon did to him, regardless of whether or not Bran could truly forgive him. He would be grieving. He was always a sweet boy, Brandon Stark.

He pulls Theon's head into his lap, cradles his jaw. His body is already going cold. It isn't Theon anymore, it's just a corpse. He knows that.

From afar Arya watches them, confused. Bran notes the irony. She and Theon both thought they weren't themselves anymore once, and they were wrong. And him?

Theon could never have loved him, he knows that – at least, not in that way. Theon never thought him anything but a child – and an annoying child, too. There was only ever one of them Theon could have loved _like that_ – they may have been only one person. Bran has seen secret kisses behind Winterfell's walls, young men experimenting, assuring themselves it meant nothing. Bran knows how hard Theon tried to forget those kisses when he sat as Winterfell's prince. He thinks, even when he was ten, he might have found it odd that Robb and Theon were always by each other's sides, although he did not have it in him to suspect anything.

He isn't jealous. How could he be?

Still, he knows Theon did care for him, like a brother. He wouldn't have died here otherwise. Would Theon still have done it, had he truly known the person he was fighting for was long gone?

He pulls the body closer, but Theon is only slipping further away. They are both gone now.

Still, Bran leans down and, as gently as he can, presses a kiss upon his lips. He tastes the blood that spills there. It is like something from the songs and stories he learned love from, the fair maid and the noble knight who died for her, a single kiss given from life to death, beneath the eyes of the gods.

Bran Stark and Theon Greyjoy lived together, they loved each other, and they died together. Bran is not what they once were, but he is still here. He remembers all, but if there's one thing he remembers better than anything else, it is Theon.

And so he does the one thing he never did. He kisses him. He gives the boy whose body he wears something back.

 


End file.
